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A Shuswap First Nations legend is being kept alive thanks to technology and a group of local eldersFrom the Tlli7sa story text: 'He charged up to the beaver, he stabbed him with his harpoon, and he got dragged to the bottom of the water. Braden Hallett worked closely with elders to produce the images. (Illustration by Braden Hallett)

Technology is helping to keep First Nations languages alive. A new app being launched this weekend will connect 17 Secwepemc communities in the Shuswap Nation through an interactive project that connects photos, illustrations, audio and text, along with lessons, in a collaborative story-telling project.One of the final parts of the journey, when the “brothers” in the story turn to stone, and show the stone columns on the river at High Bar Canyon (mid-Fraser River), look like right now. Since these are real living places where events took place long time ago, the researchers are fading actual photos of locations into the illustrations that imagine Tlli7sa and his and his brothers̓ journey.

The stories of this app represent a more than 4,000 -year-ago episode of events involving the protagonist Tlli7sa and his brothers, initially commemorated by Secwepemc elders in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as told to then-ethnographers Franz Boas, George Dawson and James Teit, and still in part remembered by elders.

Marianne Ignace, director of SFU's First Nations Language Centre, recorded this in the mid-1980s. From 2014-16 they were re-crafted as an elaborate and eloquent text by Skeetchestn elders under the direction of Ignace and her husband, Chief Ron Ignace, adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

The result is an interactive way to access the 18 episodes of the story built around Tlli7sa, a character whose special powers are used to reflect things people did thousands of years ago throughout Secwepemc (Shuswap) territory, and involving amazing knowledge of land, landscape, ecology, and the emergence of technical skills and social relations.

The app, which has completed testing, is the first of several planned as part of a seven-year project, started in 2013, when Ignace secured a $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, working with 12 different Indigenous languages in BC and Yukon.

She has worked with several First Nations groups to develop the first level of their apps, including the Secwepemc Story app and apps currently under development for Haida and for Sm‘algyax (Coast Tsimshian).

Ignace says the apps will appeal to all ages, including youth, and provide a unique opportunity for those no longer living in their communities to learn their ancestral language.

The app will be unveiled on Sunday at the Secwepemc Cultural Gathering in Skeetchestn (half-way between Kamloops and Cache Creek), which will feature language workshops among a host of traditional activities.